Trimble predicts election gains
The Ulster Unionists will emerge stronger in this week’s Assembly election in Northern Ireland, their leader David Trimble predicted tonight.
As British Prime Minister Tony Blair appealed for a strong turnout at polling stations this Wednesday, Mr Trimble insisted the party would not fall behind the rival Democratic Unionists.
At an election event in south Belfast appealing to voters to turn out at the polls, the Upper Bann MP said: “I will give you just one prediction.
“We will not lose a single seat to the DUP and we will make gains.”
With the future of devolved government and the Good Friday Agreement riding on this Wednesday’s result, unionists and nationalists have admitted it is proving increasingly difficult to tell how exactly the Assembly’s 108 seats will fall.
Assembly members will be elected under a complex proportional representation system, with six seats up for grabs in each of the 18 constituencies.
Voters will mark their ballot papers in order of preference, marking the number one against the candidate they want to see elected, the figure two against their second favourite, a three against their third favourite and so on.
Later preferences will decide who wins the final seats in each constituency and the future shape of any power sharing government in Northern Ireland should devolution return.
Democratic Unionist MP Gregory Campbell tonight dismissed Mr Trimble’s optimistic prediction.
“If Mr Trimble is still blissfully unaware of the unionist reaction on the doorsteps, then he is in for a bigger shock than many in his own party would have him believe,” the East Londonderry MP said.
“I am sure he will be relieved of his blissful ignorance when the ballot boxes are opened on Thursday.”
Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams predicted today his party was going to attract preferences for the first time from a “small amount of more far-sighted unionist voters”.
The West Belfast MP said the party would make gains at the expense of the rival nationalist SDLP whose supporters, he claimed, had been put off by their “negative, carping and begrudging campaign against Sinn Fein.
“Many SDLP voters are telling us that they are going to vote for Sinn Fein this time. We are being told that the SDLP’s failure to scrap student fees and the proposal by their ministers to bring in water charges are key issues of concern.”
SDLP director of elections Brid Rodgers hit back, insisting her party’s core vote remained strong.
“Our campaign to protect the Agreement and stop the DUP has hit home with nationalist voters and that is why we will again be the largest nationalist party after the votes are counted,” she said.
“Nationalists will be suprised that Gerry Adams is attacking the SDLP at a time when we are going all out to stop the march of the DUP.
“A vote for the SDLP is the best way of stopping the DUP. We will not let them renegotiate the Agreement.”
At the conclusion of the Anglo-French summit Prime Minister Tony Blair appealed for a strong turnout at polling stations.
“We are now at the point in the politics of Northern Ireland where I can’t make any more decisions, I can’t renegotiate agreements, I can’t rewrite those things that have already been agreed,” he said.
“The decision now is for the people of Northern Ireland and they are going to have to decide in a fundamental way whether Northern Ireland today is a better place than it was six, seven, ten years ago, and if it is they are going to have to come and vote for it.”
